This story contains a high octane charged sequence of events that grip you from the very first page and does not let down in momentum. The story has aThis story contains a high octane charged sequence of events that grip you from the very first page and does not let down in momentum. The story has a great plot and some good old hard boiled characters, elements that pan out into a solid thriller. There is loads of tension and intrigue, the writer displays craftsmanship in weaving this story together.One actress finds herself the target of a hot pursuit and to be cleaned, eradicated. A house-sitter, fixer kind of guy who has connections with FBI finds himself tangled up in the web, a cover up. They must both find a way out in this cat and mouse game because once The Accident people are called in they can only be one outcome. I wait in anticipation for his next instalment in this Hardie trilogy with Hell and Gone by Duane.

Some insightful excerpts.

'Number of accidental vehicle crash deaths in the United States per year: 43,200.'

'Number of vehicle stolen in Los Angeles every year: 75,000.

'Number of accidental suffocations per year: 3,300.'

'Number of accidental falls per year: 14,900.''Percentage of murder victims killed by someone they know: 58'

"She never cared that she was going thirty miles faster than any sane driver would attempt on this road. She loved the ocean air smashing into her face, the feel of the tires beneath as they struggled to cling to the asphalt, the hum of the machine surrounding her body, the knowledge that one twitch to the left or right at the wrong moment meant her brand-new car, along with her brand-new life, would end up at the bottom of a ravine, and maybe years later people would ask: whatever happened to that cute actress who was in those funny romantic comedies a few years ago?

Oh BizArro! where for art thou bizarro! A trip to a very big bookstore left me quite embarrassed I asked the salesman about some authors and he checkeOh BizArro! where for art thou bizarro! A trip to a very big bookstore left me quite embarrassed I asked the salesman about some authors and he checked the computer with no joy, I asked about bizarro genre and he looked at me strangely! This trend of bizarro is not out there yet in the stores in the u.k, online and in ebook format are the only sources out there for me.Day two bizarro search..I wake up from sleep as I drag my legs out of the bed and gently place them on the ground I find my shorts are very heavy as I stand they fall off. I am looking at a small book miniature sized it's a bizarro book there in my shorts, is that where you find them? Did the fairy bizarro hear my wishes and visit me in the sleep? I don't know. The story The Egg said Nothing writes about the same experience as me, but the protagonist gave birth to an egg and over a course of few hours went on a killing spree. The story was not like Dickens or Lovecraft but was a flowing quick read on the bizarro side. Well I feel in need of someone cerebral stimulation on the wacky side so I am going to try and want more bizarro and see what I find in my underpants tomorrow morning. I fear for society as this bizarro craze is rising, put a stop to it for you own sanity please!...more

The actions of people in the pursuit of love and happiness are sometimes unplanned spontaneous and dangerous. In this story a man comes to town and beThe actions of people in the pursuit of love and happiness are sometimes unplanned spontaneous and dangerous. In this story a man comes to town and becomes involved with a married woman. They plan and plot her way out of the marriage, options on the table they want things to be clean. They have a plan, how will it unfold? Will they walk away in each other arms in happiness?

One thing for sure is there will be blood.Well if your familiar with the authors writing and read his novel Double Indemnity you will know that his story becomes intricate and a web that his characters must free themselves from. This was another enjoyable tale of individuals and the macabre.I found this info on the title of the novel on good old Wikipedia..

The title is something of a non sequitur in that nowhere in the novel does a postman appear, nor is one even alluded to. The title's meaning has therefore often been the subject of speculation. William Marling, for instance, suggested that Cain may have taken the title from the sensational 1927 case of Ruth Snyder. Snyder was a woman who, like Cora in Postman, had conspired with her lover to murder her husband. It is recognized that Cain used the Snyder case as an inspiration for his 1943 novel Double Indemnity; Marling believes it was also a model for the plot and the title of Postman. In the real-life case, Snyder said she had prevented her husband from discovering the changes she had made to his life insurance policy by telling the postman to deliver the policy's payment notices only to her, and instructing him to ring the doorbell twice as a signal indicating he had such a delivery for her.In the preface to Double Indemnity, however, Cain gave a specific, and entirely different, explanation of the origin the title for The Postman Always Rings Twice, writing that it came from a discussion he had had with screenwriter Vincent Lawrence. According to Cain, Lawrence spoke of the anxiety he felt when waiting for the postman to bring him news on a submitted manuscript—specifically noting that he would know when the postman had finally arrived because he always rang twice. Cain then lit upon that phrase as a title for his novel. Upon discussing it further, the two men agreed such a phrase was metaphorically suited to Frank's situation at the end of the novel.With the "postman" being God, or Fate, the "delivery" meant for Frank was his own death as just retribution for murdering Nick. Frank had missed the first "ring" when he initially got away with that killing. However, the postman rang again, and this time the ring was heard: Frank is wrongly convicted of having murdered Cora, and then sentenced to die. The theme of an inescapable fate is further underscored by the Greek's escape from death in the lovers' first murder attempt, only to be done in by their second one.In his biography of Cain, Roy Hoopes recounts the conversation between Cain and Lawrence, only he extends Lawrence's remarks. He did not merely say that the postman always rang twice, but rather that he was sometimes so anxious waiting for the postman that he would go into his backyard to avoid hearing his ring. It was no good, however, for if the postman's first ring was not noticed, his second one, even from the backyard, would be.

You are transported to the world of Ivan and walk with him to his last moments at deaths door. A story of the terror of death and Ivan's fear of dyingYou are transported to the world of Ivan and walk with him to his last moments at deaths door. A story of the terror of death and Ivan's fear of dying, his concern and sorrow for his families witnessing of his howling and decline. Suffering realizes joy of youth and memories of the best of days, while he is in this process of death the solitude brings him to doors of gone memories of happiness. How our daily trappings take us away from finer and truer happier moments of life, a time lost so valuable, we are a generational lost by media consumption, mobiles, internet and tv fine examples of vehicles of joyous hours but are also guilty of stealing our treasured hours that could be spent in much so joyous moments, i myself am guilty of these behaviours but i find the much joy in the solitude and private thought of words and reading. A short story but the magnitude of the message conveyed great to me I am now thinking of my past and age of innocence, ignorance is bliss words uttered by oh so many. This is the first reading of any of Tolstoy's works for me and I wait in anticipation to descent upon the treasure trove of his works of literature, Bon voyage alas I must hasten to read more and more.

"From the very beginning of his illness, from the time when Ivan Ilyvich first went to the doctor, his life had divided into two opposite states of mind, which alternated each other: now there was despair and the expectation of the incomprehensible and terrible death, now there was hope and the interest-filled process of observing the functioning of his body. Now there hung before his eyes a kidney or an intestine that shirked it's duty for a time; now there was only incomprehensible, terrible death, from which there was no escape."

"In the recent time of that solitude in which he found himself, lying face to the back f the sofa, that solitude in the midst of the populous town and his numerous acquaintances and family- a solitude than which there could be none more total anywhere; not at the bottom of the sea, not under the earth-in the recent time of that dreadful solitude, Ivan Ilyvich had lived only on imaginings of the past. One after another, pictures of the past appeared to him. They always began with the nearest time and went back to the most remote, to childhood, and there they stayed."

"And again right there, along with this course of recollection, another course of recollection was going o his soul-of how his illness had grown and worsened. The further back he went, the more life there was. There was a goodness in life, and more of life itself. The two merged together."As my torment kept on getting worse and worse, so the whole of life got worse and worse," he thought. There was one bright spot back there, at the beginning of life, and then it became darker and darker, ever quicker and quicker. "In inverse proportion to the square of the distance from death," thought Ivan Ilyvich. And this image of a stone plunging down with increasing speed sank into his soul. Life, a series of ever-increasing sufferings, races faster and faster towards it's end, the most dreadful suffering."

A girl who’s traveled the land, her mind filled with people, sights and words, with sins and redemption. She’s only 15 and has killed many the rule iA girl who’s traveled the land, her mind filled with people, sights and words, with sins and redemption. She’s only 15 and has killed many the rule is kill or be killed. A desolate land of death and zombies, she did not choose this destiny. Amongst the contagious spreading of zombies, she hides from many in the shadows and is well equipped to fight twice her size equipped with her Gurkha knife. This story is written well, a story so bleak about death and survival and love has some beautifully written lines, written in eloquent prose that makes the zombie story that so much better.

The story is about death and redemption and one girl’s eventual outcome amongst so much darkness, at times heart-breaking.The island, The Lighthouse, The Moon and The Miracle of the Fish.

"And, too, a carnival of death, a grassy park near the city center, a merry-go-round that turns unceasing hour by hour, its old-time calliope breathing out dented and rusty notes while the slugs pull their own arms out of the sockets trying to climb aboard the moving platform, some disembodied limbs dragging in the dirt around and around, hands still gripping the metal poles—and the ones who succeed and climb aboard, mounting to the top of the wooden horses, joining with the endless motion of the machine, dazed to imbecility by gut memories of speed and human ingenuity. And the horde, in the blackout of the city night, illumined only by the headlights of the car, everywhere descending and roiling against one another like maggots in the belly of a dead cat, the grimmest and most degenerate manifestation this blighted humanity on this blighted earth—beasts of our lost pasts, spilling out of whatever hell we have made for them like the army of the damned, choked and gagging and rotted and crusty and eminently pathetic, yes, brutally, conspicuously, outrageously pathetic."

The Books Behind The Reapers Are The AngelsAs I suspect is true of all novels, The Reapers Are the Angels is cobbled together from the fragments of other books. Any but the most passive reader will collect certain baggage from the books he or she reads—lingering impressions that stick like burrs in the back of the brain and sometimes, especially if the reader is also a writer, plant themselves in the imagination like seeds that grow into other books entirely. For me, these influences can range from a narrative style that I wish I could emulate, to an unforgettable scene, or a perfectly written sentence, or even an ideally chosen and placed word (like the word "thrapple" in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian). For a writer, those are the things that brought you to literature in the first place—a fascination with artful storytelling—so it's not surprising that the things you admire most make their way in sometimes insidious ways into your own writing.I've heard this process referred to in a number of ways: everything from plagiarism to artful thievery to homage. But I think I like Tolstoy's metaphor best: art is a contagion. It infects you with its brilliance, and you feel inspired, however humbly, to recreate it and infect somebody else with it.

Even though it is, without question, a zombie novel, Reapers traces the source of its literary infection back to the Southern Gothic tradition and the classic stories of the American frontier. Here are some of the contagious books that have contributed to The Reapers Are the Angels.

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner. The more I write, the more I find myself in debt to Faulkner. The unquestionable master of the Southern Gothic, Faulkner is an icon for writers because he is unafraid to go big: he does not hesitate to launch into epic considerations of good and evil, womanhood and manhood, sin and corruption, nobility and redemption. You could accuse him of being melodramatic, but in an age when so many books seem to be written in a snickering, self-deprecatory style, I personally would rather see someone err in the direction of grandiosity rather than modesty. Some small homages to Faulkner in Reapers: Temple's name, which comes from Sanctuary, and the figure of Maury, who is based upon Benjy in The Sound and the Fury. Also, the Grierson episode evokes the short story "A Rose for Emily," about a woman (Emily Grierson) who refuses to make the transition from the past to the present.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain. Reapers is structured as a classic American road novel, the form of which has its roots in Huck Finn. It is episodic, and we are drawn forward by an overdetermination of motives: an escape from whatever imprisonment is behind the hero and a pursuit of whatever freedom lies before the hero. Temple is, I think, a version of the pragmatic, earnest Huck Finn. The pseudonym she uses, Sarah Mary Williams, is the same one Huck Finn himself uses when he dressed up as a girl.

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy. For my money, this is one of the great American books of the second half of the twentieth century. Its storyline makes it more of a Western, but its style is pure Southern Gothic. The primary conflict is between an unnamed "kid" and a man who seems echo the expansive, chatty evil of a Faustian devil. I think my character Moses is a kinder, gentler version of that antagonist. In addition, a number of the scenes of vast violence in Reapers are inspired by those from Blood Meridian, particularly the infamous Comanche attack scene.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston. You wouldn't normally associate Hurston's lovely, poetic, romantic novel with zombies—but she does tap into a folkloric kind of mysticism that has always fascinated me. My term for zombies, "meatskins," actually comes from Hurston, but she uses it simply to describe puny human beings: "meatskins dancing around the toes of time."

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell and Smonk by Tom Franklin. These are two masters of the contemporary Southern Gothic genre. My character of Temple is inspired by the tough, relentless heroines of these two novels. Both of these authors create teenage girls who have managed to survive in brutal surroundings, who have actually grown accustomed to violence and corruption. But what both these authors admire about their characters (you can feel it in the affectionate way they write about them), is their ability to maintain a certain purity within their own individual codes. These girls survive because, even though they live on the rough and tumble margins of society, they are driven by a personal idealism that tells them what to do.

And it would be remiss of me not to mention two television shows that have contributed a great deal to Reapers: Deadwood, which is the perfect representation of a violent, blustery, and wholly beautiful frontier lifestyle, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which represents a landmark in tough, intelligent, complicated and sympathetic young female protagonists.Alden Bell's Top Ten Zombie Movies10. I Walked with a ZombieJacques Tourneur's 1943 classic illustrates the voodoo roots of zombie mythology. The stiff melodrama of this film fits perfectly with the hypnotic movements of the zombies themselves and the decaying gothic sensibility of the setting. This is a different kind of zombie: there are no half-rotted walking corpses here—only haunted figures wandering in authentically creepy trances.

9. 28 Days LaterThis seems to be the movie that changed the genre. Suddenly zombies were driven by fury more than hunger, and they ran after you with surprising athleticism rather than loping with a stiff, corpse-like gait. Personally, I'm a fan of the more traditional slow zombies, but I admire this movie for the way it uses the zombie backdrop to portray a very gritty story of human frailty.

8. Night of the Living DeadWhat George Romero did with this movie was show that zombies make a marvelously accommodating metaphor for whatever political, social or philosophical point you want to make. He shows us that modern zombie stories aren't, for the most part, about zombies—which is beautifully illustrated by the opening scene where the zombie doesn't jump out at you but lingers, unfocussed, in the background for quite a while.

7. ZombielandI love this movie partly because it is reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead in its playful fascination with post-apocalyptic landscapes but also because it features a cast of characters all of whom have already learned to be survivors. Whether through brutality or trickery or avoidance, these characters have learned to live in the midst of a zombie infestation—and their masterful handling of a blighted world is deeply satisfying to watch.

6. Evil Dead 2: Dead by DawnI have no excuse for this one. I saw it as a kid and thought it was the height of wit. How could the movie be so irreverent to something as deadly serious as flesh-eating zombies? It was my Noel Coward. As a teenager, I had the movie poster fixed permanently above my bed. A grinning skull gazing at you with a sly sideways glance.

5. American ZombieA brilliant faux documentary about the marginalized population of zombies living on the fringes of Los Angeles. This movie does more than any other to humanize zombies—even turning them into an oppressed yet articulate minority. Understated and surprisingly touching.

4. Re-AnimatorI don't know if this exactly qualifies as a zombie movie, but I love it anyway. It delights in its perverse grossness, and it hearkens back (in a mostly sincere way, despite the number of viewers who like to see it as campy) to old fashioned mad scientist tales.

3. Cemetery ManThis underrated 1994 movie, featuring Rupert Everett as a cemetery keeper who has a problem with the dead returning to life, has some of the most wonderfully absurd incarnations of zombie mythology, including a troop of zombie boy scouts, a zombie motorcyclist, and a zombie bride who is no more than a head. Plus, it features the classic line, uttered by the vivacious Anna Fulchi, “You know, you've got a real nice ossuary.” Yes, the movie wants to be a hundred different movies at once. Yes, the special effects are clumsy and the humor broad. But, curiously enough, it's also a deeply cerebral study of life circumscribed by death.

2. Dead Alive (also called Braindead)When this first came out, it was lauded as the most gory movie every made. I don't know how such things are measured, but it would certainly take some effort to find a movie more stomach-churning than this one. Priding itself on bizarre dark humor and innovative ways to be killed, the movie is great because of its unabashed Freudian subplot. Leave it to Peter Jackson to combine a zombie slaughter-fest with the psychological trauma of a severe Oedipal complex.

1. Dawn of the DeadFor me, this is the archetype, this is where it all began. I remember watching it in complete wonder at all the curious reversals: the portrayal of the zombies as sad and rather pathetic background figures, the fixation on the technical logistics of survival (how much time is spent on showing how the survivors fortify and clean up that shopping mall?), the implication that humans are a far greater threat than zombies, the lack of a beginning or ending (the feeling that the movie is all middle), the portrayal of the loneliness and boredom and downright normalization of life in a post-apocalyptic world. And this, ultimately, is what makes the film so unique: where other movies in the genre do everything in their power to show how different and strange the zombie apocalypse is, Romero focuses on how familiar it Can be.http://more2read.com/?review=the-reapers-are-the-angels-by-alden-bell...more

I am writing this down in my journal I must do this otherwise I fear tomorrow I might not remember anything. Anything about the bookJune 15th 2am 2011

I am writing this down in my journal I must do this otherwise I fear tomorrow I might not remember anything. Anything about the book I read today or about me or my wife, well she says she is. I woke up this morning and my eyes were cast upon a striking beautiful woman in an even more striking body wearing nice lingerie that fits like a glove. I have no idea at that moment who she is, she says she's my wife but I don't remember being married! I am trying to piece together my life. All this is too much to muster I have been told I was in an accident I had fallen over an egg and banged my head. Strange but I don't remember this, this is what she my wife tells me. I need to write this in my oh so important journal otherwise I will run through the same routine again and not recollect her or the egg. Oh yes that book before I forget this book has inspired me to write more into this journal as the female protagonist is in same situation as me. Her story is ever so more gripping, its tense I am almost glued to the pages her quest is heart warming and heartbreaking I felt tears of joy and sadness on the completion of her story. The story is in the first-person narrative and flows in a visceral fashion. They say it can be cured what we have if we piece together our past and write, I hope so. The story was something fresh and different well worth the read. When I wake up tomorrow I must remember on reading this journal that I have to share these thoughts and write a review.

A story involving one Villain Pinkie a gang member of a sea-side town Brighton, a vibrant tourist spot and home to a horse race track . One of the ganA story involving one Villain Pinkie a gang member of a sea-side town Brighton, a vibrant tourist spot and home to a horse race track . One of the gangs operations are running a protection racket. A member of a rival gang gets murdered and police believe it's suicide, except a girl who knows the victim and as she tries to find out the truth gets caught up in the mobs path. The story lacked thrill and intrigue and was quite a watered down version of pursuit of truth and justice involving organized crime. Greene writes some good lines but just not enjoyable enough reading for me.

The black and White movie looks promising and probably made Pinkie more famous than the novel did.

Excerpt.."Vengeance was Ida's, just as much as reward was Ida's, the soft gluey mouth affixed in taxis, the warm handclasp in cinemas, the only reward there was. And vengeance and reward they both were fun. The tram tingled and sparked down the Embankment. If it was a woman who had made Fred unhappy, she'd tell her what she thought. If Fred had killed himself, she'd find it out, the papers would print the news, someone would suffer. Ida was going to begin at the beginning and work right on. She was a sticker. The first stage (she had held the paper in her hand all through the service) was Molly Pink, "described as a private secretary," employed by Messrs. Carter & Galloway."

A blogger is recruited for a political campaign. If you rewind a bit and go to the front cover the novel gives the idea that there will be some bloodA blogger is recruited for a political campaign. If you rewind a bit and go to the front cover the novel gives the idea that there will be some blood and zombies, what I found it to be is a mediocre rant about politics on the aftermath of the outbreak and the ins and outs of Blogging the news. There is no visceral thrill here but just a bit of a long drawn blabbering and considering the lack of zombies it was all too long. The author's newly released novel Deadline (book 2) is what prompted me to read this first it seems from reviewers that thats where the thrill might reside, my advice would be try that and skip this you are not going to miss much. Some of the lines were cliche. The writing was flowing well but it was much ado about nothing for me, there are readers out there that might like this sort of political look behind the zombie outbreak but it should be clear from outset what the novels about instead of a misleading packaging. We need more Zombies!...more

Forget the tag of 'Young Adults fiction' as the only thing you are going to miss is unwanted foul language and sex scenes. This story gets to the meat and bone of what is a really good thriller about zombie hunters, many of today's fiction that i have read for the Young Adult genre have cheesy one liners and cliché scenes, in this one gem you would not find this. Maberry takes you straight to the heart of the story and the action of the moment in this flowing and page-turning story. This has the makings of a TV series, similar to ‘Supernatural' where you also have two brothers who hunt out demons and ghosts instead.There is something more worse out there than zombies, more of an enemy for the Imura brothers, this enemy is killing off family members. A few of these bounty hunters, evil individuals have started something called the Gameland and are taking everyone down without rules.

With really good locations like 'The Hungry Forest' the author has created an interesting and engaging story. All I need now is to buy myself one of those Zombie cards from the story, they are like picture cards on the front of each was a portrait of a famous bounty hunter. On the back was a sort bio and the name of the artist. The next book in the series has all the makings of something even better!.

"Cadaverine was a nasty-smelling molecule produced by protein hydrolysis during putrefaction of animal tissue. Benny remembered that from science class, but he didn't know that it was made from actual rotting flesh. Hunters and trackers dabbed it on their clothes to keep the zoms from coming after them, because the dead were not attracted to rotting flesh."

"The pair of them-Charlie and the Hammer-were the toughest bounty hunters in the entire Rot and Ruin. Everyone said so. Except for a few weirdoes, like Mayr Kirsch, who said that Tom Imura was tougher."

"Most of the hunters were paid by the town to clear zoms out of the areas around the trade route that linked Mountainside o the handful of other towns strung out along the mountain range. Others worked in packs as mercenary armies to clear out towns, old shopping malls, warehouses, and even a few small cities, so that the traders could raid them for supplies. According to Charlie the life expectancy of a typical bounty hunter was six months."

" 'Quieted' was the acceptable term for the necessary act of inserting a metal spike, called a 'silver', into the base of the skull to sever the brain stem. Since First Night, anyone who died would reanimate as a zombie. Bites made it happen too, but really any recently deceased person would come back. Every adult in town carried at least one silver, though Benny had never seen one used."

"Every dead person out there deserves respect. Even in death. Even when we fear them. Even when we have to kill them. They aren't 'just zoms,' Benny. That's a side effect of a disease or from some kind of radiation or something else that we don't understand. I'm no scientist, Benny. I'm a simple man doing a job." "Yeah? You're trying to sound all noble, but you kill them." Benny had tears in his eyes.

" The world is bigger and harder to understand than you think, Benny. It was before First Nigh and it still is now. You have to keep your mind as wide-open as your eyes, because almost nothing is what it seems."

"She may answer to the name Lilah or Annie. Approach with caution, she is considered dangerous and may suffer from post traumatic stress disorder."

On writing ROT and RUINBy Jonathan Maberry - September 27, 2010I started laying the groundwork for ROT & RUIN when I was ten years old.

That’s when Night of the Living Dead opened in Philadelphia. October 1968. I snuck into the deserted balcony of the old Midway Theater, one of those vast old Art Deco theaters. No one was supposed to be up there, and no one my age was supposed to be in the theater.

By age ten I’d seen just about every monster movie there was. Vampires, werewolves, giant bugs –the works. I was kind of jaded. I thought I had a good working plan for how to deal with monsters. Crosses, silver bullets, that sort of thing. Then George A. Romero made all of the dead rise to attack the living. Not one, not a pack…all of them.

Talk about game changers. Sure, I could figure out how to deal with one or two. But legions of flesh-eating monsters?

That movie scared me more than anything I’d ever seen, read or imagined. Scared me almost sick. So….I stayed to watch it again.

Since then, I’ve seen every zombie flick, read all of the books and movies, and I’ve spent an absurd amount of my time thinking about how I would survive a zombie apocalypse. That ten year old kid in me was still trying to out-think Romero.

As I grew older and (I hope) wiser, I applied what I knew of forensic science, martial arts, basic survival, and common sense to the problem. I thought of what to do during the crisis and what could be done after –especially if zombies completely overwhelmed civilization as we know it. I’ve discussed this as a guest on scores of zombie panels. I wrote about it in books like ZOMBIE CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead and PATIENT ZERO.

But all of that was really tackling it from the point of view of an adult. I’m a very big guy, I’m an 8th degree black belt jujutsu master and former bodyguard, and I have over fifty years of life experience to draw on.

It still left me with the question of what would I have done if this happened when I was a kid? Or, what if it had happened when I was a baby and my whole life had been lived after the fall of mankind. Tough questions.

I’m a writer, and when I have something tough to figure out, I tend to write about it. Which is how ROT & RUIN got started. To explore it, I wrote it.

I started with a kid –Benny Imura-- who was a toddler when the dead rose and is now fifteen. Everything in his world has been changed because of that. Benny doesn’t truly know what life was before the terrible events of ‘First Night’. Almost all of the adults he knows have lost all faith in everything that had been part of their world: society, politics, religion, technology, the military. They are all suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. But Benny is fifteen. He expects to have a life and a future. He and his friends may have been handed a broken world, but it’s the world they’re going to have to live in. They don’t accept the idea that there is no future.

At the same time, everything in Benny’s world is defined by death. Everyone has lost someone (and even Benny has vague memories of his parents from First Night). The specter of death looms over everything and pollutes Benny’s world. This is where we meet him, and ass Benny explores this world –dealing with the constant threat of zombies, entrenched fears, violence, and the enduring corruption of evil men…he learns what it means to be alive. And to be human.

Benny Imura is an ordinary teenager, but ‘ordinary’ is a funny word, because when you scratch the surface of every single ordinary person you find an extraordinary uniqueness. Benny discovers his own weaknesses and learns the value of courage, trust, love, optimism and honor as he struggles to survive in world where zombies are really the least of his problems.http://authors.simonandschuster.biz/Jonathan-Maberry/67600213/voice

I need to get round reading this, whats put me off is that the movie has been played on the TV so many times now Clarice and Lecter are quite vivid iI need to get round reading this, whats put me off is that the movie has been played on the TV so many times now Clarice and Lecter are quite vivid in my mind. I am sure the book has lot more to offer as Harris is one of my high ranking thriller writers.Some trivia on the movie...Like "Casablanca", this movie contains a famous misquoted line: most people quote Lecter's famous "Good evening, Clarice" as "Hello, Clarice." This is not a misquote from the first movie but an actual quote from the sequel Hannibal. In Hannibal, when Dr. Lecter and Clarice (now played by Julianne Moore) speak on the phone for the first time, he does in fact say "Hello Clarice". This is the origin for the correctly quoted movie line.

Buffalo Bill is the combination of three real life serial killers: Ed Gein, who skinned his victims; Ted Bundy, who used the cast on his hand as bait to make women get into his van; and Gary Heidnick, who kept women he kidnapped in a pit in his basement. Gein was only positively linked to two murders and suspected of two others. He gathered most of his materials not through murder, but grave-robbing. In the popular imagination, however, he remains a serial killer with uncounted victims.